Explore:

Friday, October 17, 2014

We Need to Talk About the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them Trilogy

Here’s a good question to start: WHY?

For those of you who have read Harry Potter (is there a member of the millennial generation who
hasn’t?), you’ll recognize Fantastic
Beasts and Where to Find Them as a textbook that Harry and his classmates
use throughout the series. It catalogues many of the magical creatures that
they encounter throughout the series, and our dear friend J. K. Rowling
actually wrote it as a companion to the HP books in the early 2000s. This is
all well and good, and I’m sure that a lot of people enjoyed reading it and
learning more about the creatures in the books. I haven’t personally read it
myself, but I’ve heard good things.

However.

I am baffled as to how they plan to turn a textbook into a movie. NO WAIT, THREE
MOVIES. Remember when they made movies out of He’s Just Not That Into You and What
to Expect When You’re Expecting? They received a whopping 40% and 22%,
respectively, on Rotten Tomatoes. And those were actual books! Nonfiction, yes,
so I’m sure that the titles were only used because they were familiar to their
target audience (i.e. women in their 20s-40s) and the plots bear little
resemblance to the books themselves, but still. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is not only a textbook,
it’s a fictional textbook. A
fictional textbook with no plot whatsoever.

This Slate article claims that the movies will follow Newt
Scamander, the (again, fictional) author of the textbook, as he…discovers where
to find fantastic beasts, I guess. (???) Okay, show of hands: who cares one
whit about Newt Scamander? Not me. Bully for you if you do, but Newt had no bearing on the plot of any of the Harry Potter books, so the relationship
between this trilogy (oh God, it hurts to even type it) and the Harry Potter series is tenuous at best,
and at worst nonexistent.

The one good thing, I hope, about this travesty (I’m sorry,
I meant to type trilogy, oh well) is that J. K. Rowling apparently wrote the
screenplay, so I guess that’s good. Then again, we could also have a situation
on our hands like Stephen King’sStorm of the Century, which led me personally to believe he should stick to
books and forget the whole screenplay thing. The first film of the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them trilogy
will also be directed by David Yates, who directed the last four Harry Potter
films, but that gives me even less hope because I hated Order of the Phoenix (not as much as I hated Goblet of Fire, though) and I refused to see the sixth or either
installment of the seventh, so I can’t really judge his directorial chops very
well.

How do you feel about making Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them into a movie trilogy? Let
us know in the comments.

16 comments:

I'm pretty upset actually. It's all well and good for fans of that magical world (to which I'm obsessed with), but I think they should leave well enough alone. Because if this flops, it'll no doubt be a negative connotation to Harry Potter, which is vastly unfair. They're two separate entities. I understand it must be hard for J.K. to leave that world - she spent so many years consumed by it. And I understand she must have millions of story ideas that spawned from the series. But she needs to let it rest. We had to let Harry Potter go, reluctantly, and she must too. This new trilogy (yes, I'm cringing at that word - there are FAR too many of them out there nowadays) just feels like a money grab to me. It's a way for them to cash in on Potter fans even though this has relatively little to do with Harry Potter. I wasn't a fan of the last four movies of Harry Potter as it is, so now I'm even more hesitant about these new movies. Sorry, I can rant forever, so I'll stop.

I wholeheartedly agree with you. I can't see how this can ever go well... And I haven't heard any HP fans be positive about it yet. Just all kinds of articles which say that HP fans can rejoice. How 'bout no?

I'm completely okay with it. Harry Potter is really the only book series out there that I don't get irritated at the prospects of a movie. (Well...Any Tolkien stuff too, but Peter Jackson pissed me off with the addition of Tauriel.) Rowling as long said that she has had all of these stories put together for the sake of background info, so I'm not worried about it being consistent or anything like that. I would personally prefer a book series about Newt Scamander but as long as she's writing the screenplay then I'm confident that it'll turn out as good as I'm hoping. Newt is actually one of JK's favorite characters (other than Luna) so I think she'll handle it as carefully as she can. Warner Brothers came to her originally with the idea and she liked it, but after some thought she didn't want anyone else to write his story. I had some issues with the 5th movie, just because of a few scenes that seemed stupid or the best stuff cut out, and the 4th was tedious but I didn't have much of a problem with the last movies. To each their own, I suppose. I really like extension novels/movies that don't connect directly to the original stories. If she wanted to write a book or a movie based off of Bathelda Bagshot's travels over Europe I'd read/watch it, lol. Will I like it? That remains to be seen. I'm a rabid fangirl over the HP world, but I still have standard. ;P

Also there is a stage play being developed right now based off of the Harry Potter books. JK is the co-producer and collaborator on it as well.

I am excited at the prospect of this trilogy. The magical world of Harry Potter is big and there is so much potential for spin-offs because there are so many amazingly interesting characters and beautifully clever places that we would all love to hear more about. I love the idea of keeping the Harry Potter series alive with new and exciting tales. That being said, I agree with you that this whole idea of making three movies from a fictional textbook sounds downright dull and could never live up to the Harry Potter movies. But I have to trust JK Rowling because she is a genius and would not want to do anything to damage her brand (right?). I have to ask, why didn't you like Goblet of Fire? I think that movie was my favorite because it was so action-packed and clever. Ugh, am I missing something?

I don't have any strong feelings either way on the trilogy. I'm holding off judgement until after I see the first movie. As someone who read all of the companion books to the Harry Potter series, I do think it would be interesting to explore the wizarding world some more, but I've always been super geeky when it comes to world building. (I think I was one of the few people who was actually happy with The Hobbit movies?) I think, as long as the book serves as more of an inspiration than a direct adaptation, it has potential.

I'm a little worried that they're going to stretch this out too far and it will break the Harry Potter world. I think the only way ot may be a sucess is if some characters cameo, but then you have alternate actors playing the young versions which isnt as good either. In the end everyone invovled know there's provablly enough potterheads wanting more of the wizarding world that they'll show up to just about anything. And I'll probablly be one of them.

I feel like they're just taking Harry Potter too far, including Rowling. She's already come out over the years with these post-Potter "revelations" like that Dumbledore is gay and she thinks Harry and Hermione should have gotten together. I get that some people are dye-hard fans and can't let it go, but nobody is leaving anything to the imagination anymore and that's really sad to me, like readers need to be handed everything because we can't just imagine the world ourselves.

I'm pretty sure I'll watch all of them, but I just see it as a money maker. I think that anything taking place in the Harry Potter world is still going to be good.

I didn't like the movies directed by David Yates, but only because there were so many differences from the book so it annoyed me. At least with these movies there isn't really much of a "book" to go from so that won't disappoint me.

To be honest I'm still really excited. Just the fact that we get to explore more of J.K. Rowling's awesome world is totally amazing. I agree that 3 whole movies is a bit much. I though three separate movies on different things were being made, but... It is sad that there won't be any Harry or Ron or Hermione, but at least more movies are actually being made. One thing I really love is the fact that Luna marries Newt Scamander's grandson, so that little link makes the idea a bit more...bearable?

The only reason I'm handling the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them movies well is because I'm viewing Harry Potter as a completely separate entity. I know they're related, but barely. I agree that the three movies thing is over the top. And even though I'm hoping they'll be great, I'm also worried about the negative impact they could have on the awesomeness that is Harry Potter if they're not great. Mostly I've just seen optimistic views about the upcoming movies, so thanks for speaking your mind about it!

Yeah, I'm not sure how I feel about it. One on hand, the Harry Potter legacy will continue...but not really because it's about some Newt guy. Maybe it'll be incredible, but also I'm not that impressed with David Yates (still upset over the Voldemort confetti/awkward Malfoy hug that happened in the last movie, as well as other aspects of the films).

Full Disclosure:

We are Amazon Affiliates! What does this mean?

Simply put, if you see a book on our blog that strikes your fancy and you would like to buy it, you can click on the link and it will take you to Amazon to purchase it. A percentage of that sale comes back to the folks here at The Broke and Bookish so that we can host awesome giveaways and afford shipping costs. We are so appreciative of those of you who support us through this program. We love to give back to our readers, but don't always have the extra money to do so, seeing as how we are broke college students!